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Game developers awarded $8.5K

A local mobile video game development company was awarded $8,500 in seed funding and the title of “Bartlesville’s Next Great Entrepreneur” Thursday at the second annual Build Bartlesville Innovative Ideas Competition awards ceremony.

Tim and Sara Kilpatrick, founders of Hero Factor Games, received first place in the 2012-13 competition and were presented with a check in the amount of $8,500 for funds to start and grow their business.

The basis of the company, who’s slogan is “Use Your Powers for Good,” is to create exciting mobile video games with content supporting positive, personal, family and community values. The husband and wife team hopes to create games that are fun and challenging while maintaining positive principles.

“We believe games are exceptional communication tools because they require players to make choices and then take action based on those choices,” Sara Kilpatrick said. “Unfortunately, there’s so few positive values being presented in games right now, and the ones that do present positive values are frankly failing to reach the target market because they’re just boring.

“We’re taking a different approach,” she said. “We are making rich, rewarding, challenging gameplay that sucks you into the game … and then we take this positive content and we weave it through the fabric of the game.”

The Kilpatricks said they have been creating ideas of games in their heads for years, and the money received from the competition will help them to make those dreams a reality.

“We’re choosing to use our powers for good by bringing value to the video game industry,” said Tim Kilpatrick.

Runner-up Heartland Roasters also received a check — totalling $4,500 — towards the growth of their business. The specialty coffee roasting company, founded by Wesley Lantrip, Michael Young and Tony Phillips, provides high-quality coffee to independent coffee shops and restaurants.

“Great, high-quality coffee sells,” said Lantrip. “Forty million people in this country every day drink gourmet coffee, and that number is growing every year.”

According to data provided by Lantrip, the retail gourmet coffee market is an $11.1 billion industry, and the majority of those funds come from national chains.

“Independent food and beverage companies that don’t sell gourmet coffee are leaving money on the table,” Lantrip said. “(At) Heartland Roasters, we provide gourmet coffee solutions to independently-owned establishments to give them the edge they need to compete against the national competitors in today’s marketplace.”

Hero Factor Games and Heartland Roasters were chosen from six finalists and their proposals. Remaining finalists included Appineers, a mobile application development company proposed by Ben Onukwube; Divine Escape Bed and Breakfast, proposed by Kathryn Jo Keim, seeking to renovate her current gift shop into a bed and breakfast; The Asking Academy, a program of the Institute for Conversational Fundraising — a fund-raising training program — proposed by Kent Stroman; and Love’s Beauty Supplies, a retail ethnic hair and beauty supply store proposed by Lovetta and Andrew Randolph.